One important thing to note and keep in mind when jibing is, that depending on the wind, the wing may be powerless, you may even have it backwind and push against you if the wind is light and/or you have lots of speed foiling downwind. That is because you are creating stronger apparent wind by riding fast, than the atmospheric wind that is blowing.
There are several ways to avoid this and even make use of it:
▶️ Do a Tack instead
Very funny,… well – it’s an option.
▶️ Minimise straight downwind time
First of all you can try to minimise the time of heading straight downwind to a minimum, by doing a relatively tight turn from downwind to downwind on the new tack. This is especially useful when riding in very light winds, as you may want to build up power in the wing to keep going, which happens when riding across the wind.
▶️ Use a Jibe variation
This is where all these tricks that we can do wingfoiling come in handy! There are great jibe variations that help to avoid the wing to be backwinded, even make use of this. A well timed Duckjibe with the wing ducked to the inside of the turn for example, also a Race Jibe or the often called Heineken Jibe can be a great option for that. All these are pretty easily learnable variations and don’t require extreme freestyle skills. Also, don’t worry the Wing Tricktionary will have you covered with step by step approaches and pre-exercises to get there effortlessly!
Duck Jibe by Michi Rossmeier (@rossi256.tricktionary)
Lay down Jibe by Beat Steffan (@beatsteffan)
Wing Tricktionary
The Wing Tricktionary is instructional content delivered to you primarily in form of a book. Tricktionary books contain all the knowledge about a given sport, in this case Wingfoiling and are made with every level taken into consideration, so you can find the basics as a total beginner or not even Wingfoiler yet, but also have great insights into high level techniques, provided by some of the best athletes in the world.
Follow @wing.tricktionary on instagram to stay up to date and check for Wing Tricktionary Status Updates in WING category here on this blog or on its page on our website. On the website you can also join the Wing Tricktionary Pre-order email-list to be informed when it’s about the be ready and out for you to get your hands on.
Feel free to send over questions about what you would like to know more about – of course we’ll have all details in Wing Tricktionary book once out.
All the best
Michi
